How Music Together® Classes Can Help Your Child: 10 Things To Know

1. Bring Your Family Together Through Music

From Music Together Summit Director, David Palomo:

I
came to Music Together from a counseling background. Changing direction to teaching Music Together
was a “no brainer”—I was blown away by what I saw in the demo classes during my
Music Together training: I saw young children engaged in their verbal skills at
their individual level of development; I saw them also engaged in their motor
skills at their individual level of development. Most of all, I saw them engaged emotionally at their individual level
of development. Not only were they
engaged in positive emotions from the unique evocative quality of music, they
were also engaged in a positive
emotional experience with their parents in doing music together. I knew from counseling experience that if a
family has a strong emotional foundation they can handle just about anything
life throws at them.

So
not only was I seeing music support a child’s verbal and motor development, I
was seeing music support the child’s emotional development and the development
of emotional ties within the family. What a great way to help support building strong families!

2. Bring Your Family Together Through Music, part
2

Here’s some research about how music brings us together. We know music has been used in parades and
celebrations. Think of the shared
emotional experience at a concert when everyone fires up a lighter. Recent research shows that “repetition is a key element in music, one that both pulls us into the
experience and pulls us together as people.”

3. Our
Philosophy at Music Together Summit: Music Learning Supports All Learning®, part
1

Musician/music producer-turned neuroscientist Daniel J.
Levitan has written a book called “This
Is Your Brain On Music.” As a
producer he wondered what made one song a hit and another song a bomb even
though the musical competence was high. This led him to neuroscience. One
of things he discovered from neuroscience is that musical function is
distributed throughout the brain. That
is, brain research showed him that if someone suffers a brain injury in the
area of the brain that handles language, they lose their language ability. But with music distributed in several areas of
the brain, you can have a brain injury in one area of the brain and retain your
musical ability. This suggests that when
your child is doing music, they’re exercising and developing several areas of
their brain at once. How cool is that?

4. Our Philosophy at Music Together Summit:
Music Learning Supports All Learning, part 2

In the Music Together community worldwide, we keep hearing
stories of how music learning supports all learning. Many parents new to Music Together are
surprised to see their toddler (or almost toddler!) spontaneously joining the
class in tapping our knees as we sit and sing.

Here’s a study of first through third graders showing “that
those simple sing-a-longs [with hand clapping] help a child's motor and
cognitive development.” If this is
having such an impact on first graders, imagine how big an impact the
spontaneous knee tapping we see in Music Together can have on your child’

One of the research studies we share with families in our
classes at Music Together Summit is a study done of Music Together parent-child
classes in Bridgeport CT. This study is
notable because it was conducted independently by the Michael Cohen Group, an
educational research company in New York city. The study was undertaken for the Bridgeport community action agency to
help them assess the value of Music Together in the early learning initiative
program in that community.

What this independent study found:

·
The majority of two year olds’ standardized test scores ranked at or above

60 percentile on receptive and
expressive language skills

68 percentile on interpersonal and
coping skills

·
Almost all three
year olds’ standardized test scores ranked at or above

90 percentile on receptive and
expressive language skills

80 percentile on interpersonal and
coping skills

6. Music
Learning Supporting Learning And Brain Development

From
Music Together Summit director David Palomo: The problem with a lot of the research into children and music is that
the pedagogical approach appropriate to elementary age children is
emphasized. Sometimes it’s even
misapplied to early childhood music studies. I have found that early childhood music involves a developmental
approach. These children have not yet
developed the language and cognitive skills of the elementary age student.

A case in point is the study I’m citing
here. Although the study was done with preschool
students, the study was pedagogical and not developmental in its focus. Nonetheless, we can, with caution, see how it
applies to the experience our families have with Music Together.

The study refers to children who were given
“musical training.” I would point out
that Music Together takes a developmental approach that gives young children a
developmentally appropriate musical experience whereby they can
internalize and then physicalize the basics of tone and rhythm. Keeping in mind
that Music Together uses this developmental approach that fits the learning
styles of young children (rather than a music “training” approach more
appropriate to elementary age children), we can infer that the gains found in
this study (which focuses on music training) would apply as well to children in
Music Together classes.

The study found that “even
a year or two of music training leads to enhanced levels of memory and
attention when measured by the same type of tests that monitor electrical and
magnetic impulses in the brain.”

“We therefore hypothesize,” write the study’s authors, “that musical training (but not necessarily
passive listening to music) affects attention and memory,
which provides a mechanism whereby musical training might lead to better
learning across a number of domains."

They say, “musical
training might lead to better learning across a number of domanins.” In
Music Together we put it this way: Music learning supports all learning.

Several parents at Music Together Summit have shared with us
how Music Together classes have helped their child with issues of speech
delay. As one parent commented: Ellie loves music class and the songs are a part of life
every day for us! If you can believe it, Ellie did not speak a word until the
beginning of 2013 when she was 2 years and 8 months old....this is about the
time she started music class. I swear to my husband that this is a big part of
what brought her out of her shell!!

According to a recent study, “making music can improve both pro-social behaviour (voluntary
behaviour intended to benefit another) and the problem solving skills of young
children.” The study found that “music improved helpfulness for both girls
and boys with children in the 'Music' group over thirty times more likely to
help than those in the 'No Music' group.”

(Becca Moskovitz is one of our teachers at Music Together
Summit. In addition to being a Music
Together parent, she is also a speech and language pathologist in Hudson public
schools. When she began teaching at
Music Together Summit in the fall of 2013, she also began using her Music
Together training in her work. Here’s what she found.)

As
the speech and language pathologist working with children with multiple special
needs, I am running a music group this year, based on the Music Together
program. After our first group today, I was thrilled and hopeful this will be a
very positive experience for my students. In just one class, we witnessed a boy
with extreme muscle weakness independently use both arms to imitate motions
(something he struggles to do on a daily basis). We watched a boy with autism
imitate stick rhythms and remain engaged for 25 minutes of focused activities.
And we sat for 30 minutes with a boy who typically exhibits aggressive
behaviors, sit side by side with peers, participating in call-response songs.
We addressed social communication goals, fine motor skills, and receptive
language skills in one single session. I'm anxious to see what the rest of our
year holds as we continue to make music together!

10.The benefits of using music with special
needs children—some research